The present invention relates to the field of storage trunks for motor vehicles, and more particularly to storage trunks for trucks and sports utility vehicles.
Flatbed trucks of the type with open bed cargo areas such as the Jeep.RTM. Wrangler.RTM. truck are especially susceptible to unwanted intrusion. These vehicles generally have no large secure storage area (trunk) that will keep cargo and personal effects out of sight and secure. Articles left unattended in the truck are viewable by potential thieves and subject to theft and tampering. The theft of articles from these open vehicles is a major problem for owners. Moreover still, the threat of theft of articles is a major inconvenience to owners when shopping, traveling, or engaging in any other activity that involves transporting articles in the vehicle.
In the past, storage boxes and devices that create storage space in trucks have been devised to address the above described security problem. For the most part, these storage devices are relatively permanently installed (to prevent theft of the entire device and its contents) in the vehicle--usually by mounting the storage device to the rear bed of the truck with metal bolts or sheet metal screws. One consequence of permanently mounting the storage device in the rear bed of the truck is to reduce the cargo capacity of the truck and thus render the truck less useful for transporting cargo. Furthermore, if the owner needs to use the rear bed of the truck at its full size or for some other use, the storage device must be removed from its relatively permanent attachment to the vehicle with tools, which is a time consuming and laborious operation for the owner.
One such past storage device on the market today is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,938,519 issued to Bradley S. Schlachter. This storage device is installed in the rear bed of the Jeep.RTM. Wrangler.RTM. truck behind the back seat and adjacent the rear gate door and forms an enclosure with relatively little storage capacity. Schlacher's storage device basically consists of a top wall and a front wall connected together to form an L-shaped device such that when installed, the rear bed side walls and the rear gate door of the truck form the rest of an enclosure. This storage device is also designed to be permanently mounted to the vehicle's chassis by screwing sheet metal screws through flanges of the storage device and into holes drilled into the rear bed side walls of the vehicle. Thus, Schlacher's storage device suffers on the owner those inconveniences mentioned above in addition to providing relatively little storage capacity.
There is, therefore, a need in the industry for a devise that addresses the problems outlined above as well as other related and unrelated problems.